MANILA - Political killings in the
Philippines have escalated into a full-blown
international issue, one that threatens to further
undermine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's
already wobbly democratic credentials and one that
puts at long-term risk the Philippines' budding
and lucrative military relationship with the
United States.

Philip Alston, United
Nations special rapporteur for extrajudicial
killings, and three UN staff members arrived in
Manila over the weekend to begin a three-week
independent probe that will

include meetings with
high-level government officials as well as
independent rights groups, some of which have had
their members assassinated. Arroyo has also
recently invited the European Union and certain
individual European countries to assist with
probes into the killings.

Significantly,
the UN fact-finding mission comes hot on the heels
of a revealing government-ordered investigation
into the surge in political assassinations. Led by
former Philippine Supreme Court justice Jose Melo,
a commission on January 30 revealed in initial
comments to the local media that members of the
military were responsible for the "majority" of
the killings, and although they acted of their own
volition and not on direct government orders, that
their superiors could be held accountable for
their subordinates' crimes.

The military
has already promised to prosecute any soldiers
found to be guilty of extrajudicial killings.
Meanwhile, Arroyo told foreign diplomats the day
after the Melo Commission was released that both
soldiers and armed leftist groups were responsible
for the killings and that she believed "99.9% of
our military are good, hard-working and patriotic
Filipinos". The contents of the Melo Commission's
report have not yet been revealed publicly.

Arroyo administration officials have
consistently denied any responsibility for the
killings, claiming reports that allege that the
government ordered any of the deaths are being
perpetuated by political opponents trying to
destabilize the government and score political
points before upcoming Senate elections. And
judging by recent official statements, Arroyo
believes that the UN's findings will somehow
absolve her and her administration of any
culpability for the killings.

Arroyo
could, however, be in for a rude awakening. UN
special rapporteur on indigenous peoples Rodolfo
Stavenhagen said over the weekend that her
government's inability to stop the extrajudicial
killings and the pattern of human-rights
violations victimizing human-rights defenders,
social activists, community leaders and other
innocent civilians "is seriously undermining the
international standing of the Philippine
government".

Echoes of
MarcosThat echoes what rights groups such
as Karapatan have been alleging for years. Since
Arroyo took power in 2001, at least 830 people
have been killed in an extrajudicial fashion,
including 365 mostly left-leaning political and
social activists, Karapatan claims. The larger
figure includes assassinations of journalists,
judges and lawyers known to be sympathetic to
leftist causes. Civil-society and rights groups
have frequently criticized Arroyo's perceived
public indifference to the murders, raising
questions of whether she is either unable or
unwilling to stop the violence.

To be
sure, there are questions about how much control
Arroyo really has over certain military commanders
and their lower-ranking officers. Her
administration has occasionally been beset by
military mutinies and alleged foiled coup
attempts. However, the recent escalation in
violence has placed her six-year administration on
pace to surpass the total number of extrajudicial
killings documented during the late dictator
Ferdinand Marcos' brutal tenure. During his
20-year rule, including a decade under martial
law, more than 3,000 people associated with the
communist movement were killed. That's a
particularly damning comparison for Arroyo, a
US-educated economist and self-professed democrat.

It could also significantly act to
complicate her government's relations with the
United States, which is barred by the Leahy
Amendment from providing military or police
assistance to governments found to be involved in
systematic rights abuses. Arroyo has firmly allied
herself with the US-led "war on terror", and the
Philippines has allowed US special forces and
other military personnel to take up positions in
the south to provide technical, logistical and,
apparently in certain instances, operational
support to the Philippine military in combating
Muslim separatist insurgent groups, one of which
Washington claims has ties to al-Qaeda.

Significantly, the US, no doubt at
Arroyo's urging, also included the heavily armed
and well-entrenched New People's Army (NPA), the
armed wing of the Communist Party of the
Philippines, on its list of international
terrorist groups. According to Karapatan,
the